wildlife

So I literally ran these little guys over with the lawn mower! Luckily they are in a small depression in the ground and the mower passed right over them without any harm. On the following pass, I noticed the ground moving and stopped the mower to investigate. What I found was four super-cute, super-soft baby bunnies. They are so young that their eyes still aren't open. I didn't want to disturb them too much, but I did manage to get a few shots...

So we'll stick with the frogs for today... Anya spotted this little fella when we were out for a nice little nature walk for her birthday last week. I am really impressed with just how simple yet effective his camouflage is. That simple dark stripe along the head really allows him to sit among leaves on the forest floor and almost disappear.

Ok - I know I've been AWOL for like a month. I still have to process all the hundreds of photos from the Balloon Quest, and I've acquired a few other sets of photos that still need to be processed. We've had a ton of stuff going on here - most of which included construction/demolition work that resulted in being absolutely filthy and exhausted. Additionally, I purchased a new PC and was in the process of getting it setup to be the new photo processing machine. Since the construction work has been handed off to the contractor, I've been able to finish (at least mostly) configuring the PC and processed one set of photos on it last night. Let me tell you - it absolutely burns through them and certainly will make processing photos much quicker (not having to sit and wait for about 30 seconds for each photo to load will be amazing!).

Oh! I forgot... one of the days recently included a couple trees coming down after a storm. As we assessed the situation, Anya found a Grey Tree Frog (Hyla versicolor). Since this is something I've been wanting to find for years, I had to run inside and despite dim light conditions managed to get a handful of shots...

I promise I'll try and get back to posting more regularly. I really want to take advantage of all the wildlife and macro opportunities our new property is allotting me - I just need to get into a better balance of work versus play!

I did manage to setup Tom's 100-400mm lens recently and got some decent bird photos. These are probably some of the best bird photos I've managed to date, so without any further ado I give you a pretty large bird and a fairly tiny bird, both shot with the same lens but in very different methods.

First up we have a Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) - we have these visit our pond with some regularity, but they still remain skittish and any attempt to approach them has proven difficult. This shot I managed from our front porch - I'd thought I used both a 2x and a 1.4x teleconverter on it, but the EXIF info is reporting only the 2x numbers, so I could be mistaken. One interesting thing here is that supposedly I shouldn't have been able to use autofocus for this shot, but I did. The Canon 7D (and most cameras) can only use autofocus is the maximum aperture value is larger than f/5.6. With this lens and any teleconverter, the effective maximum aperture is well above that mark (since the lens itself is f/5.6 and the teleconverters reduce that by 1, 2, or 3 stops if combined). However, putting the camera into live view and using the LCD to zoom in on my subject, I was then able to use AF without any issues at all. I'm sure the results aren't ideal - and that is evident if you look at this image at full size, but it certain had usable results here.

This next one takes that same telephoto lens and uses it in a very different method. Instead of using teleconverters to extend its long distance capabilities, I instead used an extension tube to improve its close distance capabilities. I know the terms are confusing, but perhaps some day I'll write up the differences of teleconverters versus extension tubes, but for now just a quick explanation. Teleconverters are used to magnify the image, they usually come in 2x and 1.4x magnifications; their trade-off is that they reduce the amount of light coming into the camera and effectively make exposure more difficult. Extension Tubes are used to reduce the minimum focusing distance of a lens and by doing so provide a smaller degree of magnification; their trade-off is that they eliminate the lens' ability to focus on items farther away, but they do not affect the amount of light entering the camera.

Anyway, I used the Canon 100-400mm lens with a 32mm extension tube to allow for the lens to focus closer and provide a bit of magnification and pointed it at the hummingbird feeder on our porch. With patience, I managed to get a handful of shots using different methods - I'll share one today and a couple more soon.

As you can see, these are slowly improving. I'm happy to be able to start seeing the detail of individual feathers. I'll have to continue working on getting better results, but this is a nice step in the right direction.

Alright, while not technically in my backyard, it was close enough... we came across this girl at the park that we take the dogs to for their daily walk. After we finished our walk, I went home and grabbed the camera and managed to get a few shots and couple minutes of video before it started raining...

Stills will be coming soon after I have a chance to process the rest of them.

Ok, so nothing near as detailed as what I got with the red-winged blackbirds, but I forgot that we did have some Northern Flickers nesting in a tree near our house. Their nest cavity was probably 40 feet up, so this was the best I could do to capture the changing of the guard as one flicker returned to the nest and the other took off. I wish I could have gotten the one in flight in focus, but it happened so quick, I didn't have a chance to change the focal point.

So far this spring, we've seen nesting robins, geese, brown thrashers, phoebes, and red-winged blackbirds. I haven't been able to get photographs of all of them, but here's a series of a couple different red-winged blackbird nests...

So I'm finally getting around to processing some photos from before my camera took a bit of a ciesta. It is since back from Canon and the repairs seem to be working. I still need to test the focusing to see if they did indeed clear up a soft-focus issue. Regardless, here's a shot of a tiny red squirrel that has been visiting since winter.